Sports of The Times; Detroit Fans Cheer for the Quarterback Without the Union Label

THE last guy anyone in Detroit would have considered a football hero became an unabashed, unmitigated, unquestioned hero yesterday. In this town that wears the union label so proudly, he was considered a strikebreaker. In this town that has boasted such quarterback stars as Bobby Layne and Earl Morrall and Tobin Rote, the guy who came to camp this summer as the team's No. 3 quarterback, who has played in things like the Potato Bowl while attending a community college, who wasn't even drafted by the National Football League after his senior year in college, this guy is today's hero here.

And in this grizzled, battered town, this blue-collar, lunch-bucket town, the guy with the dark, tousled hair and the gentle eyes and the unprepossessing build of, say, a high school chemistry whiz, this guy was cheered wildly by the 78,290 football fans in the Silverdome.

What Erik Kramer did to deserve all this was lead the Detroit Lions to a spectacular 38-6 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional playoffs, placing them in the National Conference championship game Sunday against Washington and giving them a chance to go to the Super Bowl and win their first football championship in 35 years.

Kramer led Detroit simply by completing 29 passes in 38 attempts for 341 yards and three touchdowns. He did it after he was goaded and baited and derided by the Cowboys. The Cowboy defense stacked up on the line, virtually daring him to throw, and anticipating that he would give the Lions' ace runner, Barry Sanders, handoff after handoff.

Earlier in the week, a pair of Cowboy defensive players, Tony Casillas and Jack Del Rio, were outspoken about Kramer, calling him a scab for having crossed the picket lines to play for Atlanta during the strike-interrupted season in 1987.

Del Rio kept up the verbal barrage during the game, or part of it, anyway.

"I didn't hear him make any more remarks after the first quarter," said Kramer.

On the first series for the Lions in the first quarter, Kramer took the Lions 68 yards for a touchdown on five plays, all of them passes, concluding with a 31-yard toss to Willie Green.

"I took the remarks that were made about me as a challenge," said Kramer. "They didn't show me respect; they didn't show our team respect. When I woke up this morning I didn't even feel any jitters. I just wanted to get to the stadium to play."

When it was all over, Kramer said: "It's been a dream season, and this was a dream game. Now we gotta keep it going."

Kramer got his chance this season in the Lions' eighth game, also against the Cowboys. Their first-string quarterback, Rodney Peete, suffered a torn Achilles' tendon on the first series of plays and was lost for the rest of the season. The Lions called on Kramer, who had moved past Andre Ware on the depth chart. Kramer had played three games in the strike season right out of college, had then spent two seasons in the Canadian Football League, and at this time last year, after spending most of the season on the injured reserve list of the Lions, was out of a job. He had traveled a long way to get to this point, from Pierce Junior College in California to North Carolina State to disappointments in the pros.

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But against Dallas in that first game, Kramer responded handsomely. He threw two touchdown passes and the Lions won, 34-10. He went on to play a large role as the Lions won six of their next eight games going into yesterday's playoffs. "He's won some games for us," Lions Coach Wayne Fontes said of Kramer. "He's made the big play."

In regard to his once having crossed the picket line, Kramer says: "I had to do it. It was probably the last opportunity I'd have to play in the N.F.L. It was a hard thing to do, but you have to do what's best for you."

Kramer, meanwhile, has demonstrated resilience and poise and skill this season -- his teammates call him "Brass" for his independence and coolness under pressure -- and in a curious way he seems to personify aspects of this city, the part, anyway, that consists of doggedness.

"Times are tough around here, as tough as most people can remember," said Ted Wagner, reduced to part-time work on the assembly line at the Ford Escort plant here. "So that's why a lot of us overlook it that Erik Kramer was a scab. He's our quarterback, and it's the Lions. We're rooting for him."

Motown, from "The Motor City," depends hugely, of course, on one particular industry, automobiles, which is reeling. In a depressed national economy, cars have been hit as hard as any product.

In this area, though, as in many others, sports has often been a great rallying point. And while the Lions have been down for a long time, they remain beloved. Then suddenly this season they began to win again, behind Kramer.

Nevertheless, nobody, even in Detroit, had thought of Kramer in the class of Elway or Marino or Kelly. Or Samuel Gompers.

Ted Wagner shrugged when asked about the non-union quarterback. "Right now," said the part-time assembly-line worker, "we're hoping for two things here. We want the Lions to win and for George Bush and the Big Three" -- representatives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler -- "to come back from Japan with good news about trade barriers. If that happens, there will be such a warm glow around here you'll see flowers growing in February."

And, oddly enough in this union town, maybe echoes of cheers, too, for Erik Kramer, who once crossed a picket line.

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A version of this article appears in print on January 6, 1992, on Page C00005 of the National edition with the headline: Sports of The Times; Detroit Fans Cheer for the Quarterback Without the Union Label. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe